Music biz still in need of “radical overhaul” to thrive

The music industry is stuck in a rut and it needs to make some radical changes …

The music industry needs a "radical overhaul" to its products if it wants to revive sales, and that overhaul revolves around actually catering to consumer needs. That's the argument in a new report from market research firm Forrester, which says that the music business needs to give up being obsessed with itself in favor of letting users create their own music experiences with ease. This goes far beyond offering mere albums for purchase—Forrester suggests users be allowed to completely customize and share their music in an extremely open, platform-agnostic manner.

First and foremost, the firm says consumers have the "right" to a unique music experience. This means that they should be able to completely customize what they're looking at and listening to by having lyrics, on-demand live footage, photos, live chat with other fans, expandable music/video players, and more right at their fingertips. Imagine the recently introduced iTunes LP, but with much more content to choose from and fully customizable.

Logically, the next step would be to allow users to share their creations with others. Forrester argues that this is a key element to this music product overhaul—not only should users be able to make mashups and remixes, they should also be able to share their arrangements with each other. "In this age of mashups and remix stems, artists no longer have a monopoly on the creative process," writes Forrester. "All music fans should have the chance to create, even if the only creating they do is sharing in someone else’s creation."

Needless to say, doing all of this involves the true death of DRM as we know it—or, as Forrester says, a makeover of DRM. Instead of keeping users from doing things like mixing and sharing, it should "primarily be an enabler of the consumer experiences, creative processes, and sharing." Theoretically, this would enable the solution to be cross-platform, not just on multiple OSes, but multiple devices as well. "Music products will look a lot like mobile apps," says the firm.

On one hand, it's easy to dismiss these suggestions as pie-in-the-sky fantasies. To be sure, the music industry is very resistant to this kind of major change and would love it if buyers would just keep listening to CDs (or, better yet, vinyl albums) forever, without ever going on the Internet. That world no longer exists, though—as Forrester points out, the music experience changed the minute MP3s started making their way across the Web and people started cherry picking their favorite songs (let's not even get into mashup culture, either).

In a way, iTunes LP does make a baby step into the territory that Forrester talks about, but it's still very limited in terms of customizability (it has none). What it does offer, though, is more than the typical album—lyrics, videos, and more come as part of the overall music experience. If artists see some success there, the music industry may indeed be open to taking more steps to offer content in ways that users can customize and share with friends.

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Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui